A Victor of Salamis
adance with sparkling wavelets. No need of Ameinias’s lusty call to bend
again the sails. The smaller canvas on the foremast and great spread on
the mainmast were bellying to the piping gale. A fair wind, but no storm.
The oars were but helpers now,—men laughed, hugged one another as boys,
wept as girls, and let the benignant wind gods labour for them. Delos the
Holy they passed, and Tenos, and soon the heights of Andros lifted, as the
ship with its lading of fate flew over the island-strewn sea. At last,
just as the day was leaving them, they saw Helios going down into the
fire-tinged waves in a parting burst of glory. Darkness next, but the
kindly wind failed not. Through the night no man on that trireme
slumbered. Breeze or calm, he who had an obol’s weight of power spent it
at the oars.
Long after midnight Themistocles and Glaucon clambered the giddy cordage
to the ship’s top above the swelling mainsail. On the narrow platform,
with the stars above, the dim tracery of the wide sail, the still dimmer
tracery of the long ship below, they seemed transported to another world.
Far beneath by the glimmer of the lanterns they saw the rowers swaying at
their toil. In the wake the phosphorous bubbles ran away, opalescent
gleams springing upward, as if torches of Doris and her dancing Nereids.
So much had admiral and outlaw lived through this day they had thought
little of themselves. Now calmer thought returned. Glaucon could tell of
many things he had heard and thought, of the conversation overheard the
morning before Salamis, of what Phormio had related during the weary
captivity in the hold of the _Bozra_. Themistocles pondered long. Yet for
Glaucon when standing even on that calm pinnacle the trireme must creep
over the deep too slowly.
“O give me wings, Father Zeus,” was his prayer; “yes, the wings of Icarus.
Let me fly but once to confound the traitor and deliver thy Hellas,—after
that, like Icarus let me fall. I am content to die.”
But Themistocles pressed close against his side. “Ask for no wings,”—in
the admiral’s voice was a tremor not there when he sped confidence through
the crew,—“if it be destined we save Hellas, it is destined; if we are to
die, we die. ‘No man of woman born, coward or brave, can shun the fate
assigned.’ Hector said that to Andromache, and the Trojan was right. But
we shall save Hellas. Zeus and Athena are great gods. They did not give us
glory at Salamis to make that glory tenfold vain. We shall save Hellas.
Yet I have fear—”
“Of what, then?”
“Fear that Themistocles will be too merciful to be just. Ah! pity me.”
“I understand—Democrates.”
“I pray he may escape to the Persians, or that Ares may slay him in fair
battle. If not—”
“What will you do?”
The admiral’s hold upon the younger Athenian’s arm tightened.
“I will prove that Aristeides is not the only man in Hellas who deserves
the name of ‘Just.’ When I was young, my tutor would predict great things
of me. ‘You will be nothing small, Themistocles, but great, whether for
good or ill, I know not,—but great you will be.’ And I have always
struggled upward. I have always prospered. I am the first man in Hellas. I
have set my will against all the power of Persia. Zeus willing, I shall
conquer. But the Olympians demand their price. For saving Hellas I must
pay—Democrates. I loved him.”
The two men stood in silence long, whilst below the oars and the rushing
water played their music. At last the admiral relaxed his hand on Glaucon.
“_Eu!_ They will call me ‘Saviour of Hellas’ if all goes well. I shall be
greater than Solon, or Lycurgus, or Periander, and in return I must do
justice to a friend. Fair recompense!”
The laugh of the son of Neocles was harsher than a cry. The other answered
nothing. Themistocles set his foot on the ladder.
“I must return to the men. I would go to an oar, only they will not let
me.”
The admiral left Glaucon for a moment alone. All around him was the
night,—the stars, the black æther, the blacker sea,—but he was not lonely.
He felt as when in the foot-race he turned for the last burst toward the
goal. One more struggle, one supreme summons of strength and will, and
after that the triumph and the rest.—Hellas, Athens, Hermione, he was
speeding back to all. Once again all the things past floated out of the
dream-world and before him,—the wreck, the lotus-eating at Sardis,
Thermopylæ, Salamis, the agony on the _Bozra_. Now came the end, the end
promised in the moment of vision whilst he pulled the boat at Salamis.
What was it? He tried not to ask. Enough it was to be the end. He, like
Themistocles, had supreme confidence that the treason would be thwarted.
The gods were cruel, but not so cruel that after so many deliverances they
would crush him at the last. “The miracles of Zeus are never wrought in
vain.” Had not Zeus wrought miracles for him once and twice? The proverb
was great comfort.
Suddenly whilst he built his palace of phantasy, a cry from the foreship
dissolved it.
“Attica, Attica, hail, all hail!”
He saw upon the sky-line the dim tracery of the Athenian headlands “like a
shield laid on the misty deep.” Again men were springing from the oars,
laughing, weeping, embracing, whilst under the clear, unflagging wind the
_Nausicaä_ sped up the narrowing strait betwixt Eubœa and the mainland.
Dawn glowed at last, unveiling the brown Attic shoreline with Pentelicus
the marble-fretted and all his darker peers.
Hour by hour they ran onward. They skirted the long low coast of Eubœa to
the starboard. They saw Marathon and its plain of fair memories stretching
to port, and now the strait grew closer yet, and it needed all the
governor’s skill at the steering-oars to keep the _Nausicaä_ from the
threatening rocks. Marathon was behind at last. The trireme rounded the
last promontory; the bay grew wider; the prow was set more to westward.
Every man—the faintest—struggled back to his oar if he had left it—this
was the last hundred stadia to Oropus, and after that the _Nausicaä_ might
do no more. Once again the _keleustes_ piped, and his note was swift and
feverish. The blades shot faster, faster, as the trireme raced down the
sandy shore of the Attic “Diacria.” Once in the strait they saw a
brown-sailed fisherboat, and the helm swerved enough to bring her within
hail. The fishermen stared at the flying trireme and her straining,
wide-eyed men.
“Has there been a battle?” cried Ameinias.
“Not yet. We are from Styra on Eubœa; we expect the news daily. The armies
are almost together.”
“And where are they?”
“Near to Platæa.”
That was all. The war-ship left the fishermen rocking in her wake, but
again Themistocles drew his eyebrows close together, while Glaucon
tightened the buckle on his belt. Platæa,—the name meant that the courier
must traverse the breadth of Bœotia, and with the armies face to face how
long would Zeus hold back the battle? How long indeed, with Democrates and
Lycon intent on bringing battle to pass? The ship was more than ever
silent as she rushed on the last stretch of her course. More men fell at
the oars with blood upon their faces. The supernumeraries tossed them
aside like logs of wood, and leaped upon their benches. Themistocles had
vanished with Simonides in the cabin; all knew their work,—preparing
letters to Aristeides and Pausanias to warn of the bitter truth. Then the
haven at last: the white-stuccoed houses of Oropus clustering down upon
the shore, the little mole, a few doltish peasants by the landing gaping
at the great trireme. No others greeted them, for the terror of
Mardonius’s Tartar raiders had driven all but the poorest to some safe
shelter. The oars slipped from numb fingers; the anchor plunged into the
green water; the mainsail rattled down the mast. Men sat on the benches
motionless, gulping down the clear air. They had done their part. The rest
lay in the hands of the gods, and in the speed of him who two days since
they had called “Glaucon the Traitor.” The messenger came from the cabin,
half stripped, on his head a felt skullcap, on his feet high hunter’s
boots laced up to the knees. He had never shone in more noble beauty. The
crew watched Themistocles place a papyrus roll in Glaucon’s belt, and
press his mouth to the messenger’s ear in parting admonition. Glaucon gave
his right hand to Themistocles, his left to Simonides. Fifty men were
ready to man the pinnace to take him ashore. On the beach the _Nausicaä’s_
people saw him stand an instant, as he turned his face upward to the
“dawn-facing” gods of Hellas, praying for strength and swiftness.
“Apollo speed you!” called two hundred after him. He answered from the
beach with a wave of his beautiful arms. A moment later he was hid behind
a clump of olives. The _Nausicaä’s_ people knew the ordeal before him, but
many a man said Glaucon had the easier task. He could run till life failed
him. They now could only fold their hands and wait.
* * * * * * *
It was long past noon when Glaucon left the desolate village of Oropus
behind him. The day was hot, but after the manner of Greece not sultry,
and the brisk breeze was stirring on the hill slopes. Over the distant
mountains hung a tint of deep violet. It was early in Bœdromion.(14) The
fields—where indeed the Barbarian cavalry men had not deliberately burned
them—were seared brown by the long dry summer. Here and there great black
crows were picking, and a red fox would whisk out of a thicket and go with
long bounds across the unharvested fields to some safer refuge. Glaucon
knew his route. Three hundred and sixty stadia lay before him, and those
not over the well-beaten course in the gymnasium, but by rocky goat trails
and by-paths that made his task no easier. He started off slowly. He was
too good an athlete to waste his speed by one fierce burst at the outset.
At first his road was no bad one, for he skirted the willow-hung Asopus,
the boundary stream betwixt Attica and Bœotia. But he feared to keep too
long upon this highway to Tanagra, and of the dangers of the road he soon
met grim warnings.
First, it was a farmstead in black ruin, with the carcass of a horse half
burned lying before the gate. Next, it was the body of a woman, three days
slain, and in the centre of the road,—no pleasant sight, for the crows had
been at their banquet,—and hardened though the Alcmæonid was to war, he
stopped long enough to cast the ceremonial handful of dust on the poor
remains, as symbolic burial, and sped a wish to King Pluto to give peace
to the wanderer’s spirit. Next, people met him: an old man, his wife, his
young son,—wretched shepherd-folk dressed in sheepskins,—the boy helping
his elders as they tottered along on their staves toward the mountain. At
sight of Glaucon they feebly made to fly, but he held out his hand,
showing he was unarmed, and they halted also.
“Whence and whither, good father?”
Whereat the old man began to shake all over and tell a mumbling story, how
they had been set upon by the Scythian troopers in their little farm near
Œnophytæ, how he had seen the farmhouse burn, his two daughters swung
shrieking upon the steeds of the wild Barbarians, and as for himself and
his wife and son, Athena knew what saved them! They had lost all but life,
and fearful for that were seeking a cave on Mt. Parnes. Would not the
young man come with them, a thousand dangers lurked upon the way? But
Glaucon did not wait to hear the story out. On he sped up the rocky road.
“Ah, Mardonius! ah, Artazostra!” he was speaking in his heart, “noble and
brave you are to your peers, but this is your rare handiwork,—and though
you once called me friend, Zeus and Dikē still rule, there is a price for
this and you shall tell it out.”